


Between The Bricks, The Spaces

by RidiculousMavis



Category: Night Watch - Sarah Waters
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, First Meetings, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 05:13:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13047207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RidiculousMavis/pseuds/RidiculousMavis
Summary: 1941, 1934, 1927. The little moments that make us."She supposed that houses, after all - like the lives that were lived in them - were mostly about space. It was the spaces, in fact, which counted, rather than the bricks." - Sarah Waters





	Between The Bricks, The Spaces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miss M (missm)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missm/gifts).



> My thanks to oxymora for betaing. And thank you to Miss M for such thoughtful prompts and for loving the book so much.

**1941**

Julia knew, then. Kay had this jauntiness to her. This spring in her step. The kind that had attracted Julia to her originally. She was solicitous, charming. Old habits that hadn’t really died were being brought out for an airing. She hummed while she polished her shoes. She was in love.

And Julia? What was Julia going to do about this? Absolutely nothing. There was nothing she could do. Kay’s passions, Kay’s infatuations, swept all before them. There had been lots of infatuations, passions, affairs prior to Julia. Julia had enjoyed that knowledge, in a way. That Kay could settle down with her. That they could build something together.

As it turned out, long before this current state of affairs, Julia had realised how hard that would be. Impossible, as it did turn out. They were simultaneously too alike and too different. The similarities chafed as much as the differences.

Julia was too similar and too different to the person she had been when she met Kay.  
Now Kay was back to that self. All chipper. Irritating, really. Julia was jealous, of course. Not just of this mystery girl who could inspire such lightness in Kay. But of Kay, for feeling it. For being so in love and so optimistic and having all this possibility laid out in front of her.

What did Julia have? Nothing.

So she watched Kay bustle about the flat, straightening books, taking a cup back to the kitchen. The dreadful minutiae of life making her happy. Making Julia sick.

Before Kay left, she had to say something winning, do something to turn the attention back to herself.

“Let me straighten your tie,” she managed, and rose towards the door to intercept.

Kay stood obediently, almost to attention. She stared fastidiously over Julia’s shoulder.

“There,” Julia said, bringing herself close, brushing her fingertips against Kay’s cool neck.  
“Now you are perfect.”

“Thank you, darling,” Kay said, just as cool, perfunctory. Her mind was elsewhere, lingering. Julia was not the stand in for this girl any more.

Did Kay know? Or was she so oblivious to her own heart, to those around her, that she didn’t notice how in the clouds her head was?

Julia could ask. Kay would most likely answer. “Who is she?” she could say. “What has she managed, to inspire such devotion in you already?”

Now Kay would be gone all night leaving Julia alone to wrestle with this knowledge. One rather large distraction being the middle of the Blitz. It didn’t help. It only made her feel small, petty. Kay had found something worth life and happiness. And it wasn’t Julia.

…

“When are you meeting her?” Mickey eyed Kay.

“Hm? Helen?”

“Princess bloody Elizabeth. Yes, Helen.”

“Tomorrow.”

And every day for the rest of her life, Mickey had no doubt was the aspiration. Which was fine. Helen had seemed nice enough. “And Julia?”

That rankled with Kay, she frowned a little, turned away. “You never liked Julia.”

“True.” Mickey wasn’t going to deny it. Polite, but she wasn’t going to be throwing Julia a parade anytime soon. “Doesn’t mean I can’t feel a bit bad for her.”

“How generous of you,” Kay muttered. “I daresay she never gave a second thought to you.”

“No, she wouldn’t,” Mickey agreed. She always felt, or imagined she felt, a tension from Julia towards her. As though she had stumbled into the room by accident, or had dared to enter the conversation when she ought to be making up the fire or just bringing in the tea.

To Julia - to Kay, even - parts of this were just a blip. They couldn’t let go of the idea that things would go back to normal.

Julia and Kay’s version of normal was, of course, very different from Mickey’s own. Kay would have something to go back to, afterwards. Even if it chafed. Mickey couldn’t go back, would never go back. There was no going back.

…

“Thanks,” Helen said as Kay passed over her tea. Her voice became lighter, crisper. That was Kay’s doing, something about her accent, her tone, put Helen on her best behaviour. It was like being at school. But there were no girls like Kay at any school Helen had ever been to.

“How are you feeling?” Kay even asked the question gently, as though Helen might break under the pressure of it.

“Fine, absolutely fine.”

Kay’s smile was wide and heartwarming. Helen thought she should rather like to keep pleasing Kay, for such a reaction. Not to be troubling or troublesome.

“And you? How are you?” Helen tried to remember her manners.

“Oh, fine, absolutely.” She laughed at herself. Helen laughed too.

That someone like Kay, so self assured and confident, should be so bashful in front of Helen was the most marvellous kind of strange.

…

Julia’s father, not given to particular attentiveness as to her personal life, was only concerned about the upheaval a move might cause her.

“Inconvenient, it seems,” he said, shaking his head. “Couldn’t you stay on there, even if she moved?”

Julia, caught in this obfuscation. “It’s Kay’s place, Papa. I’m sure I told you that before.” She did not particularly want his sympathy and was glad for all the smoke screens but it did make explaining things rather a chore.

“Perhaps you did. Does she have a buyer?”

“I don’t know Papa, I only know that I have to find somewhere. Do you know of anything going free?”

That was the only point, to tap him for information and tips. She didn’t want the dire business of looking through the paper. Goodness knows there was enough lodging in London - if you were squeezing into shared houses. Practically barracks.

Of course Julia would never submit to such a thing, nor would she be expected to. To have a roommate was interesting enough when one could well live alone.

And why anyone would subject themselves to such a thing was beyond Julia. Even with the advantages of a live-in lover the downsides were abundant.

She consoled herself with the idea that she could accessorise a new place as she liked, keep it in the exact state she liked. Which was, indeed, “a state.” If she chose to live like a slut she could. And she frequently did.

Her father drained his cup and screwed it back onto his Thermos. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.” She hadn’t eaten anything, had only sat and stared out over the river, her sandwiches lying unwrapped in her lap. In fairness, aside from the tea this morning in which she had halfheartedly dipped some bread, she hadn’t eaten anything in over twenty four hours.

But to languish sounded too much like Langrish and she did not want to do Kay the compliment of wasting away after her.

She knew, as she looked in the mirror, that much thinner and she would start to wear her age too obviously. An angled face that cut a dash, but on rationing and this energetic exercise she had become lean and any further she would begin to look hollow. Emptied out, like these shells of buildings. Which was rather how she felt.

Her mother would have been quick to notice such things and quick to alert her daughter to the ravages of age. At the threshold of thirty as she was now.

But she had no mother, only a distracted father whom she loved but who was not exactly thriving at taking over his late wife’s role.

You lose your parents, Julia thought. But now, you could lose anything. And in this war it could happen any time. At night, dropping from the sky. It was too barbaric to think of. Really, then, best not to have any attachments.

...

Mickey had left the lovestruck Kay at the junction as they parted and watched Kay walk away in a manner more accurately described as floating.

Mickey, however, would trudge her way back to the canal.

It was still early and the smog of fog and dust and smoke hung low over the streets giving them a rather haunted look. Unfriendly.

But she would get back to her home and stoke up the fire and be comfy once more. A little fire went a long way in a houseboat so that was a boon.

It was a nice life and she enjoyed it. Would enjoy it more if not for current circumstances but given current circumstances things were going rather well. The independence suited her and the slight controversy of living in a houseboat and living like this were suitably intriguing and thrilling to people.

It also worked a treat at bringing girls home provided they did not mind a slight walk over the puddled towpath, a possible brush with bramble causing a dire threat to their stockings and a rather ungainly lean against Mickey to help them aboard.

Mickey did not mind the ungainly lean at all. With hot breath spiced with alcohol it was the ungainly lean that most often provoked the beginnings of intimacy. If they stumbled all the better. Mickey could catch at them, support them. They would remark on her surprising strength.

Mickey smiled to herself now as she pulled her coat closer. It wasn’t the cold so much as the damp that crept into her.

The girls! That was a pleasant, warming thought.

Most recently a twenty one year old from Blackpool. Which might as well have been the moon as far as Mickey was concerned.

She had come down for training to manage a shoe shop. “A shoe shop?” Mickey had asked, incredulous.

“The manager was called up,” Marjorie said. “There’s a whole huddle of us girls come down to head office so we can learn to take over.”

“Learn what?” Mickey asked, genuinely unsure as to what went into running a shoe shop.

“Accounts, mostly,” Marjorie said. “It’s not exciting in the least. But it will be good, after. Get a better job.”

“Exactly,” Mickey said. That was what seemed to interest most people. Looking to the afterwards.

And what would Mickey do afterwards? Nothing as good as this.

The next night had been one of the worst of the Blitz and Marjorie had turned tail and fled back to Blackpool in terror.

Wanting to run a shoe shop was evidently not worth suffering the Blitz for.

…

Helen toyed with her hair in the mirror. It was too much, it had always been too much. It needed re-setting but time was tight, money was tight, everything was tight. Except for her curls.

It would do. And it wasn’t as though Kay was ever anything less than completely gallant about it always.

Kay was easy with the compliments. Not that Helen was complaining. There was so much darkness right now. More than seemed bearable. And then, up popped a dandelion in the pavement. Up Helen popped in a bomb site. Up Kay popped to save her. To make everything seem bearable.

So Helen was looking forward to a compliment as she got ready, smiling secretly already.

She readjusted her tights with some difficulty. Her hip was still sore and bruised. Her thighs were marked. She felt stiff sometimes, by the end of the day. It was a miracle, really, that she had suffered so little. She could have lost her legs. She could have lost her life.

It wasn’t that this made her brave - no-one could ever describe Helen as brave apart from Kay, but that was Kay - but that it made her more alert to possibilities.

More alert to the attentiveness of Kay as she opened doors for Helen, paid for tea, held out her chair.

Charles had never done that. Maybe bought a tea but he complained when Helen wanted to stop for anything. Let alone a piece of cake. Why did she need such things? Kay acted very much in the opposite. Of course Helen should want cake, why would she not?

So Helen, with her eyes newly opened to the fragility of life, of circumstance, saw Kay and her actions and believed she understood. Not only did she understand but she liked the solicitousness and knew she did. There was no wool being pulled over anyone’s eyes. They had not said as much but she felt now exactly as she did when she prepared for a date with a man.

Maybe not exactly. Maybe a little more relaxed, a little more excited, a little more daring. That was nice. She wasn’t brave. But she was doing something out of the ordinary.

Helen made one last pass over her outfit and tugged at her blouse. She paid no mind to her hair. It could get on with whatever it liked.

She stepped out of the door and down the steps. Kay was waiting for her. Milling around in the street, smoking with one hand tucked into her pocket. Looking every inch the young man waiting for his girl. But not. Helen was amazed to find how natural it felt. She took Kay’s arm as they walked down the road to find a cab.

…

Kay smiled at Helen over the table. She imagined they could take a picnic down along the river, or to a park. But it was cold, she thought Helen had been cold.

“You must look after yourself,” she chastised Helen gently.

“Really, I’m fine.”

“You’ve been through an ordeal,” Kay stressed. “You need to build up your strength.”

“I am,” Helen smiled. “You are fattening me up with cake and tea.”

It made Kay blush but Helen was teasing. Helen liked it, Kay felt sure. She liked the fuss and the attention. Helen was special. She deserved someone to look out for her. To smooth the way, make things easier. Goodness knew things were hard enough.

And Kay wanted so desperately to do that. To look after Helen, to soothe her aches and pains and worries.

To survive, to have found Helen like that in the rubble. She was tough but she was tender, she was resilient and vulnerable and it was terrifying in a sense, how precarious the world was.

“Is it too cold?” Kay asked as they left.

“No, it’s fine. It’s good.”

There was pink in Helen’s cheeks. A little flush. Her eyelashes fluttered as she looked down at her footing and then back up at Kay again.

Helen was holding so close to her, as they slowed they were facing one another.

“Maybe a little cold,” Helen confessed.

Kay frowned. She took Helen’s hands and blew on them, then rubbed them as she had done the first time they met. They sheltered from the wind between a wall and a high hedge.

Helen sighed as Kay did it. They held each other’s gaze for a moment. Then Kay dipped her head and kissed Helen’s knuckles. Helen strained towards her.

“I should very much like to kiss you,” Kay said quietly.

“I would like that,” Helen replied. So Kay took her chin, tipped up her head and kissed her.  
Gently, incredibly gently. Helen was soft and warm and supple. Helen was holding the lapels of Kay’s coat, holding her in place.

So Kay put an arm around Helen’s waist, the other hand still on her chin. Helen let out a muffled moan and Kay kissed her again, deeper, but still gently. As though she might break, as though she might dissolve into a cloud of dust, or smoke.

But she didn’t. She didn’t.

* * *

 

**1934**

Kay ran her hands over her jacket and down into her pockets. “Would you like a cigarette?”

The young lady turned her pretty, neat little nose up at Kay and took her drink away from the bar. Kay hung there for a moment, trying not to look at all put out if anyone should happen to be watching. She pulled one out the pack for herself and turned to look for a barmaid.

Facing her way was a diminutive figure, little more than a child.

“Ought to get yourself a nice case, mate.” She slipped her own from her pocket and held it up.

“Looks like my father’s,” Kay replied, lighting up, consumed in smoke.

“Ain’t that the point?”

“Not especially.”

“I’m Mickey,” she said, sticking out a hand.

They shook. A little rough, sizing one another up. “Kay.”

“Nice to meet you, Kay.”

“And you.”

This Mickey character pressed forward, leaned in. “Don’t suppose I could get a cig off you, though?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Mickey pointed at Kay’s pack.

Kay, confused, pointed back at Mickey’s shining case.

“You know how it is…” Mickey shrugged.

Kay didn’t in fact know how it was not to afford cigarettes. She barely even thought about such trivialities. But she did know the burning necessity to fit in with the ritual, to cultivate that appearance, at all costs.

“Of course,” she smiled. “Are you having a drink?”

…

Julia prowled, was the only word for it. She prowled the room, aware of people’s eyes on her. Julia Standing was here. She was chiselled from marble. She was young, she was beautiful “in a certain sort of way” as her mother liked to term it. Other women appreciated that certain sort of way and valued it as men couldn’t, or wouldn’t. They demanded perfection. Julia was not, but she could provide it. She could summon perfection out of a night.

It came effortlessly easily to her and she loved that - she loved finding things she was effortlessly good at. They were legion, happily. It seemed there was no end to her talents.

She could wind a story around her fingertips, paint pictures out of thin air.  
A story with a part to play for herself and for anyone else. Make them feel like the hero, the heroine, the protagonist at least. The centre of attention. The white knight, the damsel.

The lights were bright and the heat rose in the salon.

Julia was twenty three, she had missed the the Roaring Twenties. Everyone in this room had missed, or was currently missing, the Twenties. It was different now. Now, with the economy and the communists having running battles in the streets with the nationalists. The world was not as it once was.

To which Julia’s response was to turn the gramophone up, get another drink, and find someone to dance with.

…

“Court makes it sound like you were in front of a magistrate.”

They were supposed to be here chasing women but, more often than not, the nights ended unsuccessful with the two of them propping up the bar and talking until the small hours.

“Look out,” Kay said, eyes fixed on the door. “Fancy another drink?”

“Yes but do actually bring it back and not give it to some girl.”

“Let’s hope I do,” Kay answered, gliding out of her chair and sallying forth.

Mickey wasn’t going to watch, that would be rude. She drained her glass, then Kay’s for good measure. She was beginning to feel a little hot about the collar but she had no more money so it was this or go home.

Sometimes they did better than this. They could pal up and chat to girls together. They had a little patter. Little Mickey and Long Tall Kay. They could be a circus act and make the girls laugh.

It wasn’t long before Kay slouched back. Mickey noted a distinct absence of new drinks.

“I’m going home,” Kay said. “This is painful.”

“Got run off did you?”

Kay was cool and indifferent. “No.”

“She got someone here already? Don’t suppose you’d come to my aid if I got myself in a spot of bother.”

“Thinning out the competition,” Kay said. “I’m all in favour.”

“Let’s be away then.”

They collected their coats and mooched out into the moonlight. Outside didn’t help much, the chill bringing on an instant dose of sobriety.

Mickey’s coat was thin, it was rubbed and worn and she was cold. She was liable to struggle in anything more than a stiff breeze. Mickey shivered. Kay looked at her. Mickey would never shiver if she was with any other girl. Had to put on that front.

Kay could see right through it anyway. Kay saw through a lot.

Mickey looked slyly at Kay scuffed along the pavement, hands deep in her coat pockets. She wasn’t like any friend Mickey had ever had. She wasn’t like anyone Mickey had ever met.

Not in that sort of bar, not anywhere.

Their very own Stephen Gordon. She had never said that to Kay. It would please her too much.

…

Some of Helen’s friends had wanted to go dancing, so dancing they had gone. A boy had asked to walk her home, and as that meant walking Pauline from next door home too, Helen had agreed. He seemed a little sullen, then, but Helen didn’t mind.

“Good evening?” her mother asked as she came in.

“Yes, thank you,” she said absentmindedly. The kitchen was nice and warm, though it was dully lit. She poured herself some reasonably hot water from the range and made a brew.

“Pauline all right?” her mother asked.

“Yes,” Helen said.

“Have a dance?”

“A few.”

Her mother put down her work. “Not chatty. Come here, let me have a sniff.”

“I’ve not had anything to drink,” Helen said, but obliged and huffed out a little breath.

Her mother sniffed with a frown but was pleased. It had been a very fruity tipple and early on, for exactly this reason.

“So what’s the problem?”

“I don’t know,” Helen sighed.

“You young people, should be having fun. So what about that Freddy, did you see him out?”

“No, not tonight.”

“Shame. I thought you had fun at the pictures that one time.”

“We did.”

“He told your father you were a cheap date.”

“He what?”

“Said you didn’t want no popcorn or a drink.”

That was true. Though not with the exact intention of being referred to as cheap.

“Your dad can give him a nudge if you like.”

Helen shrugged. “If he hasn’t asked he probably didn’t want to.”

“Oh, Helen, you won’t be helped will you?” her mother fussed. “What’s your big plan then?”

“I don’t have one, I suppose.” She fiddled with the tablecloth.

“You suppose. Always putting on your airs. Probably that’s what puts the boys off.”

“They can be put off if they like.”

“You don’t want to come over snooty. Freddy’s got a good job with your dad, your father thinks the world of him.”

“How fascinating.”

Her mother tsked.

“I’m sorry, Mum. It all just feels a little hopeless.”

Her mother softened. “You’re young yet, petal. You’re so young.” She touched Helen’s hair. “And you’re beautiful. Enjoy yourself. It won’t be like that forever.”

“You’re still beautiful, Mum.”

Her mother batted the compliment away. People said they looked alike so maybe Helen was clinging to something. Her mother was faded, but she had been ever since Helen could remember. You could clearly see how she must have looked as a young woman, with a stronger jaw, fuller lips. A quicker laugh, less worry, the time to do her hair and makeup.

She’d not been dancing so much, less fun, got married young. By the time she was Helen’s age now she’d already had her two children and was well settled in life. Helen wondered if that was a problem. If she thought Helen was strange. But it was more that she seemed to approve of Helen living her own life.

“I don’t know,” Helen mused, trying to sound as if she were just thinking this for the first time. “I don’t know if I’ll ever find anyone.”

“Course you will.” Her mother was so complacent about it she went back to her knitting.

“How does it happen, though?”

“It just does. You just know.”

That seemed to be the part Helen was continually missing. She knew nothing. There was scant information to be had. Books, the flicks. It was all squabbling then passion, as if a switch were flicked. Remarkable acts of heroism that were thin on the ground in real life. A courtship, a real one. Not a boy taking a girl out for fish and chips on the seafront. Flowers and pulling out chairs and holding doors.

She was looking for the key, that switch to be flipped, that made it all make some sort of sense.

…

Kay’s night had taken her to Soho and taken most of the day too. Now she finally tripped her way onto the street it was dusk. Her muscles ached from the… exertion. So she started walking to stretch her legs, get some air in her lungs.

It was an easy route, the sort a tourist might take or a group of schoolchildren be shepherded on. Checking off Leicester Square with the crowd heading into their entertainments, Trafalgar Square flocked with bicycles and buses, down Whitehall and to the Houses of Parliament.

Here a crowd busied around and Kay saw a bonfire taking shape on the lawn. She was barely aware it was November.

Now she found herself stood by the Palace of Westminster. Not the one Guy Fawkes had tried to destroy. Because, in the end, it had burnt down anyway.

London had continuously been razed to the ground and begun again. The Great Fire had allowed London to become what it was now: the city of Wren and Nash. Then there was Barry’s new palace she stood in front of. Room for Bazalgette, for Brunel to come along. Always progressing in fits and starts towards a whole new city.

Kay reflected that it was easy to be philosophical about London going up in flames when one had only read about it in history books.

So Kay walked on and stood on the north side of the river to watch fireworks come up from Battersea Park. Past a chestnut stand, a woman with toffee apples on a tray. Men with children balanced on their shoulders. Young couples smiling arm in arm.

She watched the firework squeal into the sky. For a moment it looked like a dud. The crowd held its breath. Then the pop, the bursting into colour and the crowd bursting into life, applauding, the children whooping. Another, and another. Light against the darkness.

* * *

 

**1927**

“Ma, please!”

“Iris…” Her mother shook her head. “Go call them boys down.”

The boys had Bible names. James, Matthew, Francis, Luke. But Iris. She was a flower.

Mickey did not feel much like a flower.

She was the youngest, the fifth child. Her ma and pa had kept going, so the neighbours said, for a girl. She was not the girl they had bargained for.

Of course her brothers doted on her, aiding and abetting all the mischief she could get up to. Of course she worshipped them and followed them around. To her mind there was no reason why she shouldn’t want to be like them, be like her family.

When her brothers got ready in the morning it was all pushing and shoving, the smell of grease in their hair. They jockeyed over the sink to shave.

Frank landed a great blob of shaving cream on Mickey’s chin as she sat on the stairs watching them.

“Them peacocks are as vain as girls,” her father grumbled on his way past.

Mickey took the cream in her hands and lathered it up. “I’m a girl.” It wasn’t a statement, more a contradiction. He looked helplessly between his preening sons and his daughter patting shaving foam onto her cheeks.

“Will you tell Ma I can go with them tonight?”

“Not a chance.”

…

Helen’s father tuned the wireless into the night’s entertainment and they sat close round the fire. Her brother lay on the floor spread out with his comics and Helen was beading with a new Christmas gift book.

It was a fiddly thing and she was beginning to doubt her mother’s motivations in giving it to her. They had clashed more than once over Helen’s ambitions once she finished school the coming summer. Helen wanted to go in for secretarial training, shorthand and typing and so on. Her mother was not convinced. Her father was indifferent.

Considering this was the first year she hadn’t asked for a pony for Christmas - being far too mature now - Helen did feel it was a bit stiff to be training her up for work. She wasn’t that mature. The line between girlhood and womanhood was thin and apparently this was a tipping point.

Disappointment reigned because her brother had wanted a wireless kit for Christmas and hadn’t had one either. At least he got to lounge about on the floor, not squint and poke his fingers with a needle. The pattern for her beaded bag was nice but Helen was not given to the embroidery or crafting side of things.

Besides, one hardly needed to. Far nicer bags were in the shops, made by ladies far better at the art than Helen. When she had a job she would be able to buy herself these things, anything she liked. Her mother couldn’t make her sew her own clothes or linen. She would go to a department store and be waited on - not do the waiting.

Of course she would give a good portion of her earnings to her mother for the household upkeep. But she would have an income of her own and that felt like a power.

1929 was only a few hours away and Helen could hardly wait.

…

Julia had stayed up for New Year’s plenty of times before but this was the first year it was official, that she was joining the grownups downstairs. Now she was sixteen, a woman.

She was under pretty strict surveillance by her aunt and mother. Only one glass of champagne had been pressed into her hand, moments before the countdown began.

Her cousin’s friend Bertie had been on the periphery of her vision all night. There was a bunch of them all down from Oxford for the break. Now, with seconds to go, he was by her side. She smiled at him, conspiratorial. He smirked, glanced around at everyone else gathering in the centre of the room, calling to one another and shouting the passing seconds.

“Come on,” he said and she followed, ever so obedient.

The hall was silent, cold and dark. Bertie bundled her into the back staircase, where it was even more so. The calls from the dining room were muffled, a long way away.

Julia still had her champagne. She put it on the stairs and when she stood he was there, right there, with his arms going around her and his mouth on hers.

‘Oh God,’ she thought. ‘It’s happening.’

The cold of the rough walls tingled against her skin, still hot from the dining room. It sent a shiver through her. She could barely see through the darkness. Every creak of the stair as they moved crackled in the pit of her stomach with the thought they might be discovered.

The cries crescendoed and then burst in laughter as the year ticked over.

Bertie pulled back. “Happy New Year,” he grinned, and kissed her again. “I’ve been waiting to do that all night.”

Julia had been waiting for that to happen for years.

Evidently it was over, Bertie was straightening himself out. He brushed down the front of his crisp white shirt, rearranged his bow tie.

Bertie went back into the hall. There was still a terrible energy rippling through her so she stayed where she was. She sat on the step and drank her champagne. She might still be discovered and that was thrilling enough.

Matching muffled echoes of cheers were coming from downstairs too and the house would be on the move again soon. People would look for her. They would find, Julia felt sure, a different version of herself. Truly a woman now.

…

One of only a handful of girls who hadn’t gone home for the Christmas break, Kay leant over the railing of the balcony. The lake was just about coming into view with the gentle waves catching the morning light.

Her mother was ill. Not ill enough for Kay to be called home, but ill enough not to need the inconvenience of hosting a Christmas gathering, and apparently nor did any of her other relatives. The Langrish clan was wearing thin around the edges. The Twenties had picked off some casualties to divorce, bankruptcy, gambling.

Relations were tense, though Kay was not privy to all the details. Sometimes she had managed to catch her mother in a talkative, spill-all mood and glean some notions of fallings-out and rifts over money or unsuitable marriages, bad investments and economic woes.

So all in all Kay was not at all displeased about not being home. Rules and regulations were greatly relaxed over the holiday with members of staff being thin on the ground. And the whole point was that there was little mischief the girls could get up to in some secluded Swiss canton.

Little did they know, about the mischiefs a group of well bred English eighteen year olds could get up to.

Kay had enjoyed a good deal of that mischief.

Finishing school, with its focus on the social, had been most illuminating. Far more interesting than all her previous years of schooling put together.

They were here to be made marriageable. Much as Kay objected to transporting books around on her head when she had perfectly good, strong arms, she rather liked the idea of being married.

The only issue being that Kay knew, as surely as all these girls knew they wanted to marry a viscount, that she wanted to marry a girl who would settle for a bit less than a viscount.

In return for not being a viscount or a knight of the realm, Kay would do her best to exceed expectation. She would be the most solicitous, the most loving, the most gallant, person in the world. Irrespective of not being a man. To take her revenge on them she would be better than them in every conceivable way.

It seemed such a thrilling plan. Even the idea of heartbreak seemed romantic to Kay.

The very notions lit a warmth in her that the air could not match. It was freezing but the dawn was creeping over the mountains on the horizon, catching in the trees and rippling on the water. It was coming for her. The future was coming for her.


End file.
